42 China The EconomistNovember 23rd 2019
C
hina wasthis week confronted with documentary evidence
that it has built a vast and cruel police state in its far-western
region of Xinjiang. In what appears to be an extraordinary leak of
official Chinese papers, the New York Times published secret
speeches by President Xi Jinping urging that Muslims infected
with the “virus” of extremism undergo “a period of painful, inter-
ventionary treatment”. The leak lays bare the cold-blooded bu-
reaucracy required as China, starting in 2017, seized hundreds of
thousands of Muslims, most of them from the Uighur minority,
and locked them without trial in re-education camps for even
modest acts of piety, from growing long beards to praying outside
state-controlled mosques. The paperwork of repression includes a
script to be used on youngsters whose parents are behind bars:
“Treasure this chance for free education that the party and govern-
ment has provided to eradicate erroneous thinking.”
Chinese officials have offered three contradictory responses.
The government of Xinjiang called the report a “complete fabrica-
tion” cooked up by anti-China forces in the West who cannot bear
to see their region succeed. A spokesman for China’s foreign min-
istry took a more cautious line. Rather than deny the report out-
right, he called it a “clumsy patchwork” that distorted “so-called
internal documents” in order to smear China’s successful counter-
terrorism and de-radicalisation policies. The third response of-
fered by state media and some officials is strikingly different. It
skates close to an admission that Xinjiang is indeed under iron-
fisted rule, and that the world should be glad of it.
Zhao Lijian is a Chinese diplomat and licensed provocateur
with his own account on Twitter, a social-media platform banned
inside China. Mr Zhao, who was recently brought back to a senior
post in Beijing, took to Twitter on November 18th to denounce
Western “preaching”. Taunting the West for being wrong about
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he declared, “China deserves
a big like for showing how to deal effectively with terrorism and
extremism in Xinjiang. Toughness and prosperity are a great com-
bination!” That tone was echoed by the Global Times, a tabloid
owned by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship news-
paper. In an editorial paired with a photograph of dancing Ui-
ghurs, the tabloid credited “decisive measures” with preventingXinjiang from becoming another Afghanistan or Chechnya. The
Global Timesnodded to a strain of thought among nationalist intel-
lectuals and party ideologues, who chafe at the idea that China’s
100m ethnic-minority citizens, and notably restive groups such as
Uighurs or Tibetans, should enjoy special privileges as the price of
peaceful co-existence with the 1.3bn-strong Han Chinese majority.
They favour promoting a collective national identity.
The Global Timestook a bluntly majoritarian line in its editori-
al, suggesting that when Western elites grumble about Uighurs,
they underplay the rights of all Chinese. “The dispute over Xin-
jiang is a clash between not only two value systems, but also two
interest systems. All Chinese people, including people of all ethnic
groups in Xinjiang, hope for peace and prosperity in the region.
Measures that help reach this goal are in line with morality and
justice,” opined the Communist Party tabloid, which has been at
the forefront of the more candid, defiant line on Xinjiang.
It may sound counter-intuitive, given the risks that Uighur ac-
tivists, exiles and Western researchers run to bring information
about Xinjiang to the outside world, but honesty may turn out to
be harder for the West to handle than outrageous lies. That is be-
cause, judging by the Mr Xi seen in the leaked papers, that unapol-
ogetic worldview—China is ruthless, and needs to be—is close to
his own. The leaked papers include a secret speech from 2014 in
which Mr Xi tells senior officials to shrug off international criti-
cism: “Don’t be afraid if hostile forces whine, or if hostile forces
malign the image of Xinjiang.” That was in a time of murderous
terrorist attacks by Uighur militants, and in the leaked cache Mr Xi
distances himself from predecessors who hoped that economic
growth would cure militancy. “In recent years Xinjiang has grown
very quickly and the standard of living has consistently risen, but
even so ethnic separatism and terrorist violence have still been on
the rise,” he noted. In the leaked papers Mr Xi puts his faith in all-
pervasive surveillance, strict ideological training and increased
flows of Han Chinese settlers into heavily Uighur regions.Tyranny of the majority, with Chinese characteristics
Mr Xi’s lodestar is the absolute authority of the Communist Party.
But he may also be understood as a populist, centralising
nationalist. And whether Mr Xi is promoting his “China Dream” of
national greatness or demanding tighter controls to “Sinicise” Is-
lam, Christianity and other religions, his ideas resonate with
many citizens. Chinese public opinion is not monolithic, and the
leaked papers reveal how some Han Chinese officials in Xinjiang
resisted the new get-tough regime, even quietly releasing Uighur
detainees. But ordinary Chinese live amid a pounding drumbeat of
nationalism and constant reminders of an unspecified terrorist
threat. There are security checkpoints at every airport, railway sta-
tion and metro stop in China, complete with giant armoured pots
like witches’ cauldrons, into which bombs may be popped. There
is little evidence that such security theatre is resented. Domestic
tourism to Xinjiang has flourished even as police checkpoints and
surveillance cameras turned the region into a techno-authoritar-
ian dystopia, with famous Chinese travel bloggers marvelling at
how safe the region is. Anti-Muslim paranoia is rampant on the
Chinese internet.
Secret brutality by Chinese authorities was hard enough for the
world to deal with. Open, unblushing repression is a still greater
headache. Challenging horrors in Xinjiang may involve confront-
ing Chinese public opinion, as well as China’s rulers. It is unclear
whether the world has the stomach for that fight. 7Chaguan Totalitarian and proud
In response to a damning leak, few Chinese officials are blushing